“14 Lawyers Appointed to Lead Consumer Suits over Marriott's Data Breach,” Law.com

April 29, 2019

A federal judge in Maryland has appointed 14 lawyers to lead class actions brought by consumers over Marriott Inc.’s data breach last year.

A federal judge in Maryland has appointed 14 lawyers to lead class actions brought by consumers over Marriott Inc.’s data breach last year.

Judge Paul Grimm of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland appointed the leadership team, as well as others to lead cases against Marriott brought by financial institutions and shareholders, following a hearing on Monday. Among those appointed are three veteran data breach lawyers as co-lead counsel: Andrew Friedman, a partner atCohen Milstein Sellers & Tollin Washington, D.C.; Amy Keller of Chicago’s DiCello Levitt; and James Pizzirusso, a partner at Hausfeld in Washington, D.C.

Both Pizzirusso and Friedman were on the plaintiffs’ steering committee in the data breach cases against Equifax and Home Depot. Keller was co-lead counsel in Equifax, and Friedman was co-lead counsel in the Anthem data breach case that settled for $115 million.

“We’re honored to be appointed co-lead class counsel on this important case,” Friedman wrote in an emailed statement. “Starwood, and later, Marriott took more than four years to discover the breach, allowing the unprecedented theft of hundreds of millions of their customers’ most sensitive data. We look forward to helping the victims of this data breach hold Marriott accountable for its actions.”

More than 80 lawsuits were filed over the breach, which Marriott International Inc. announced Nov. 30 and that compromised the personal data of 500 million guests of its Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide properties (Marriott has since lowered that figure to fewer than 383 million).